Book reviews

Maya Goldenberg’s book fell on fertile ground in terms of its relevance to the current pandemic context, both specific to vaccines and beyond. Much of the book goes well beyond the vaccine hesitancy story and digs into broader issues of science and society, the politicisation of science, the ‘stubborn’ mind and the myth that expertise is dead. Goldenberg situates vaccine questioning and reluctance in a broader discussion on trust or lack of trust, calling for a ‘reframing of vaccine hesitancy as a crisis of trust . . . in scientific institutions and governing agencies’. In short, the issues at hand are relational, not anti-science per se, but reflect distrust of the institutions that govern and interpret science. Particularly concerning, in terms of their trustworthiness, is the role these institutions play in mediating between the science and the public. Ay, therein lies the rub. Goldenberg challenges the notion that vaccine hesitancy is a ‘war’ on science, noting that ‘characterizing vaccine hesitancy and refusal as a war on science is both descriptively inaccurate and normatively unhelpful’. She adds that ‘the framing of vaccine hesitancy and refusal as a “war on science” and a rejection of expertise. . .reduces the controversy to the status of vaccine science. . . These are concerns about justice and values rather than scientific knowledge’. Interestingly, although challenging the ‘war on science’, Goldenberg doesn’t tackle the ‘war’ metaphor often invoked in global health from the ‘fight’ against infectious diseases and the ‘battle’ against microbes – both against ‘invisible enemies’ – to the ‘war on obesity’, among others. In this case, the ‘war on science’ suggests there is a war against science, with science being framed as the ‘enemy’, and some members of the public leading the ‘fight’, but this framing (and blaming) is given by the scientific and health community, feeling threatened by the questioning coming from the public, and blaming them from their lack of understanding. In New Pandemics, Old Politics, anthropologist and human rights activist Alex de Waal challenges the ‘two hundred years of war on disease’ framing, noting that ‘when we most need a narrative to make sense of a devastating pandemic, the “war” on disease not only fails, but also stops us recognising our failures’. Goldenberg also criticises the approach of placing the blame elsewhere, writing ‘what if focus shifted to building that trust rather than educating the misinformed publics or puzzling over their 1088066 PUS0010.1177/09636625221088066Public Understanding of ScienceBook reviews book-review2022

moral and epistemic failing'? She writes that 'new mothers frequently report silencing and shaming when they attempt to raise concerns about childhood vaccinations with their healthcare providers', a sentiment I too have heard among mothers, and write about in my book, Stuck, as one of our failings as a health community.
Goldenberg urges changing tactics, writing, It is notable that the downfall of expertise in both past and present formulation is seen as a problem lying squarely with the publics, while science and its institutions require little or no scrutiny. . .it is a mistake that scientific institutions take little interest and responsibility for the well documented public trust.
In short, it is easier to blame the virus, or blame the public rather than recognise that government, scientific and health institutions need to reflect on how they can become more trustworthy.
De Waal proposes a new more participatory framing, what he calls 'emancipatory public health'. Although their entry points are different, both authors step back from the scientific facts and the content of policies and focus on the relationships around science and policies. De Waal proposes that 'the starting point is not the content of the policies, but the process for getting to them. Those who are most vulnerable and most excluded will have some of the most important things to say'. Here again, the issue is relational. It is about building trust by being inclusive, especially involving those for whom the policies are meant.
In Vaccine Hesitancy, Goldenberg discusses the problematic 'linear model' of science-to-policy, and she cites numerous critics of the model for 'wrongly assuming that the right science leads to the right policy action'. She particularly points to a key problem with the model for which 'the result is political paralysis, because the science gets politicized while the politics get scientized'.
De Waal's related critique points to the missing piece of involving the most vulnerable and most excluded in the science-to-policy process, in a sense making it circular rather than linear -that is, science-to-public-to-policy and circling back to the public who will then be more likely to embrace the science and policy, having participated in the process.
Both de Waal and Goldenberg call for approaches that will take time, which I also conclude in Stuck. De Waal's point that 'declaring a war is also declaring a state of emergency' is important to consider. Although the nature of pandemics and disease outbreaks, versus longer-term issues, lend themselves more to emergency mode, trust is rarely built in an emergency. Perhaps Goldenberg's 'crisis of trust' needs rethinking, at least as we move beyond the pandemic crisis to building trust throughout networks and relationships between science, government and scientific institutions, policymakers and publics.
On the other hand, every crisis is an opportunity to bring attention to an issue, and the bigger challenge will be to keep focused on the trust-building and trust-earning, as the crisis wanes. Goldenberg's book, after all, was largely written before the pandemic, but it found a crisis to makes its point. Science tries to understand the world we live in. To understand science and how it works, we have to get to grips with some of the methods it uses, from maths to . . . metaphor. Metaphor is not only one of the most important conceptual tools we use to live by, but also one of the most important conceptual tools we use to do science by. In this book, Reynolds explores and explains the use of metaphors in the life sciences. This is especially important as the life sciences shape the meaning of life and our ways of living and dying.

Author biography
When guiding us through the use and misuse of some of the most important metaphors in the life sciences, Reynolds exhibits a deep understanding of both the science of metaphor and the science of life, a combination of expertise that is quite rare and immensely valuable. Readers who do not have their feet in both fields will have to be patient in places but are richly rewarded.
The book starts with a succinct introduction to old and new thinking about the role of metaphors in science. One contribution, from the philosopher Mary Hesse-the distinction between positive, negative, and neutral analogies that structures metaphorical mappings in science-is used throughout the book. So too is the distinction between metaphors as heuristic, cognitive, and rhetorical/ communicative/pedagogical devices-well-known distinctions to which Reynolds adds another extremely important one, namely, metaphors as "technological instruments that assist scientists in manipulating and bringing about real material change to the objects of their study." Reynolds makes clear that far from being mere decorative devices, metaphors are more like scientific hypotheses. They are always partial and provisional and need to be kept under constant scrutiny and revised when new evidence emerges. They are, I would add, similar to models in being mostly wrong but sometimes useful. When mapping knowledge from a familiar source onto an unfamiliar target, the match is never perfect. There is always a crack. That's where the light gets in, as Leonard Cohen would say; that's where science happens.
The introductory chapter is followed in chapter 2 by an overview of what one may call basic metaphors in the life sciences, such as agent, machine, and information metaphors. Some other metaphors, such as trees, streams, and landscapes, are also mentioned, as they are important to certain fields in the life sciences. Chapter 3 then deals with metaphors that structure how we talk about genes and genomes in terms of agents, codes, programs, blueprints, and books (of life).
As genes make proteins, chapter 4 examines protein metaphors, such as machines; messengers; and, more novel perhaps, team players. All this takes place inside cells which have a long metaphorical history in terms of factories, computers, and social organisms, also explored in Reynolds's seminal book The Third Lens: Metaphor and the Creation of Modern Cell Biology (2018); the word "cell" itself has a long and fascinating history. Chapter 5 deals with cell metaphors in detail.
Chapters 6, 7, and 8 focus, in turn, on evolution (natural selection; the tree of life; and, importantly, selfish genes, a metaphor that continues to create confusion and controversies), ecology (the balance of nature, niches, ecosystem health, and Gaia), and finally biomedicine (genetic engineering, genome editing, and cell reprogramming). This chapter highlights "the performative effect of metaphors to prescribe certain avenues of research and interventions," for good or for ill. The chapter deals with issues which are also discussed in the forthcoming book by Matthew Cobb, The Genetic Age: Our Perilous Quest to Edit Life (2022). Both authors are experts at weaving together the history of science with the history of language and culture.
In the 19th century, words were conceptualized as living organisms; in the 20th century, living organisms were conceptualized as words (writing, information, code). When linguistics emerged as a discipline, it borrowed some of its metaphors from biology. When molecular biology and genetics emerged as disciplines, they borrowed some of their metaphors from linguistics and allied sciences. Both biology and linguistics emerged at a time of industrial, technological, and societal change and were influenced profoundly by these changes. Linguists and biologists met in Paris in 1968, among them Roman Jakobson, the linguist, and François Jacob, the molecular biologist. Now, more than half a century later, we have a book that both scholars would have loved to have on their shelves. This book is written in an accessible style which makes it a joy to read. It is essential reading for anybody interested in the life sciences and how these sciences and their public understanding are shaped by metaphor. The only quibble I have is with the printing: the small font makes it almost inaccessible to older readers.

Author biography
Brigitte Nerlich is Emeritus Professor of Science, Language and Society at the University of Nottingham (Institute for Science and Society). She has written books and articles on science, culture, society, and metaphor, including "Encounters between Life and Language: Codes, Books, Machines and Cybernetics" (Nottingham French Studies, 2020) and, with A. Stelmach, "Gene Drive Communication: Exploring Experts' Lived Experience of Metaphor Use" (New Genetics and Society, 2022).